Love for chemistry is rooted in Ghana

UAlbany professor, students study healing qualities of plant life

Published 6:52 pm, Monday, April 8, 2013

Photo: Lori Van Buren

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Rabi Musah stands in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other plants. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

Rabi Musah stands in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other ... more

Photo: Lori Van Buren

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Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other plants. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic ... more

Photo: Lori Van Buren

Image 3 of 5

Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other plants. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic ... more

Photo: Lori Van Buren

Image 4 of 5

Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other plants. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

Rabi Musah transfers a solution in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic ... more

Photo: Lori Van Buren

Image 5 of 5

Rabi Musah stands in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other plants. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

Rabi Musah stands in a chemistry lab at UAlbany on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. Musah is a chemistry professor and researcher with NSF grant to study the chemical breakdown of garlic and other ... more

Photo: Lori Van Buren

Love for chemistry is rooted in Ghana

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Albany

Rabi Musah, who was born in Chicago, moved with her family when she was 5 to Ghana in West Africa, the homeland of her father.

As a child, she became fascinated with the practice of medicine by traditional healers.

"It was interesting to observe the difference at that time between medicine as practiced in the U.S. with pristine hospitals, a lot of technology and expensive drugs compared to the methods of traditional healers in Ghana who treated diseases with plants," she said.

Growing up and attending school in the capital of Accra, a city of more than 2 million, she saw traditional healers treating people with compounds made from ground-up leaves, bark and roots. Assumptions between the efficacy of high-tech American medicine and the medicinal value of plants were challenged.

"A lot of Ghanians observed that they were being healed and the herbal treatment appeared to be giving positive results," she said. "But I wanted to look into it scientifically and see if the claims held up to scrutiny."

She earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Arkansas and turned to ethnobotany, a study of people of a particular culture and region who make use of indigenous plants.

Member of the Baha'i faith. She meditates early each morning, a quiet period of deep thought that also helps her discover solutions to research problems. She enjoys travel, makes jewelry and likes to bake and decorate cakes.

In her lab at the University at Albany, where Musah is an associate professor of chemistry, she heads a federally funded program where she and her graduate students study plant-derived molecules that may have efficacy in the treatment of disease.

She came to UAlbany in 1998 and focused on various rain forest medicinal plants that produced characteristically unpleasant odors. "We wanted to identify the molecules responsible for the odors, which some plants may produce for defense purposes," she said.

She focused on Petiveria alliacea, a flowering plant in the pokeweed family known as Anamu. It grows wild in the Amazonian rain forest and in Ghana and throughout West Africa. It is widely used in herbal medicine for a variety of ailments.

"We studied whether there were molecules in these plants that lend credence to their medicinal use," Musah said. "We also investigated if there are enzymes that transform precursor molecules into others that produce a bad smell."

Her research has moved into an investigation of quorum sensing inhibitors. Simply stated, it is a process by which bacteria "speak" to each other as they attack and overwhelm a host's natural defenses.

Along with collaborator Nate Cady, a professor at UAlbany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, Musah is exploring whether there are plant-derived molecules that interrupt these "conversations," and whether by doing so, they help plants to ward off infections. The long-range goal is to figure out how to stop molecules of bacteria from "speaking" to each other, thus halting bacteria growth and the spread of infectious diseases.

Musah traveled to Ghana earlier this year to interview traditional healers and to go into the field with botanists who help her identify plants that she can study in her lab.

Her basic research is at an early stage and medical applications are speculative. "Research is always ongoing," she said. "For every question we answer, 10 more questions arise. I can say that many of these plant-based medicines being used by tribal healers are effective. We're still trying to understand the chemistry so we can understand what works, what doesn't work and why."

Musah is also director of UAlbany's Center for Achievement, Retention and Student Success, or CARSS, a National Science Foundation-funded program meant to increase the graduation rates of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, majors at UAlbany.

"Science sometimes gets a bad rap," she said. "So we provide tailored and specific support to freshmen and sophomore STEM majors, who have high attrition rates. If we can get them to hang in there until their junior year, they tend to stay and do well."